KING SMALLPOX
He drew himself out on their side and shook himself; then for a time
it seemed that the earth had swallowed him, so still was he. But
Sophia knew that he was listening, standing in the dark a few paces
from them, in the hope of hearing the rustle of their skirts or their
footsteps as they stole away. Disappointed in this he began to move to
and fro, beating the bushes this way and that; now loudly threatening
them with horrid penalties if they did not show themselves, now
asserting that he saw them, and now calling to his fellow who kept
guard on the farther bank to know if he heard them. It was clear that
he knew, probably from Pettitt, that they had not had time to go far
from the carriage.
Fortunately the trend of his search was from them, and as he receded
up stream they breathed more freely. But when the sound of his
movements was beginning to grow faint, and Sophia to think of
continuing their flight, he turned, and she heard him come back on his
tracks. This time, if the ear could be trusted, he was making directly
for the place where they cowered beside the wattle fence.
Yes, he was drawing nearer--and nearer; now a stick snapped under his
foot, now he stumbled and swore, as he recovered himself. Sophia felt
the younger girl shake under her hand, and instinctively drew the
child's face against her shoulder that she might not see. Presently
she could make out his head and shoulders dark against the sky; and
still she watched him, fascinated. Three more steps and he would be on
them! Two more--the impulse to shriek, to spring up and fly at all
risks was scarcely to be controlled. One more--there was a sudden
rustle, a fathom below them, he sprang that way, something whisked
from a gorse-bush, and he stood.
"What was it?" cried the man on the other side.
"A rabbit!" he answered with an oath. "So they're not this way. I
don't believe they crossed. Are you sure they're not in that thorn
tree behind you? One of them might hide in it."
Apparently the man went to see, for half a minute later, a shriek,
followed by a thud, as of a heavy body brought hurriedly to earth,
proved the success of his search. Hawkesworth sprang towards the
stepping-stones.
"Which is it?" he cried.
"Neither," the fellow answered. "It's the whippersnapper you sent for
a decoy."
"D----n it!" Hawkesworth exclaimed, and he came to a stand. "But if
you've got him, they are not far off. We'll wring his neck if he does
not say where they are! Prick him, man, prick him with your knife."
But the poor fop's squeals showed that little cruelty would be needed
to draw from him all he knew. "Don't! Don't!" he screamed. "They're on
the other side! I swear they are!"
"None of your lies now, or I'll slit your throat!" the ruffian
growled. He appeared to be kneeling on Lane's breast.
"It's the truth! I swear it is! They were just across when you came!"
Lane cried. "They can't be fifty yards from the bank! If they'd moved
I should have seen them. Let me up, and I'll help you to find them."
"Tie him up," Hawkesworth cried. "Tie him up. And if he's lied to us,
we shall soon know. If we don't find them, we'll drop him in the
water. Tell him that, and ask him again."
"They're by yon!" Lane cried. "I swear they are!"
Sophia felt, she could not see, that Hawkesworth was peering round
him. Even now he was not more than ten or twelve paces from them; but
the gorse-bush, from which the rabbit had darted, formed a black blurr
against the fence, and deepened the obscurity in which they lay.
Unless he came on them they were safe; but at any moment he might
discover the fence, and guess it had brought them up, and beat along
it. And--and while she thought of this she heard him chuckle.
"Be still, man," he cried to the other, "and keep your ears open. The
moon will be over the hill in five minutes, and we'll have them safe,
if they are here. Meantime, stand and listen, will you? or they may
creep off."
Sophia swallowed a sob. It seemed so hard--so hard after all they had
done to escape--that nature itself should turn against them. Yet, it
was so; the man was right. Already the moonlight touched the crest of
a gorse-bush that grew a little higher than its neighbours; and
overhead the sky was growing bright where the ridge line cut it. In
five minutes the disc of the moon, sailing high, would rise above that
spot, and all the hill side, that now lay veiled in shadow, would be
flooded with light. Then----
She shuddered, watching paralysed the oncoming of this new and
inexorable foe. Slowly the light was creeping down the gorse-bush.
Minute by minute, sure as the tide that surges to the lips of the
stranded mariner, the pale rays silvered this spray and that spray,
dark before; touched the fence, and now lay a narrow streak along the
nearer margin of the stream. And the streak widened; not slowly now
but quickly. Even while she watched it, from the shelter of the fence,
feeling her heart beat sickening bumps against her side, the light
crept nearer and nearer. In three or four minutes it would be upon
them.
Sophia was brave, but there was something in the sure and stealthy
approach of this danger that sapped her will, and robbed her limbs of
strength. Unable to think, unable to act, she crouched panic-stricken
where she was; as the hare surprised in her form awaits the hunter's
hand. Until only a minute remained; then with a groan she shook off
the spell. To run, even to be caught running, was better than to be
taken so. But whither could they run with the least chance of escape?
She turned her head to see, and her eyes, despairing, climbed the
slope behind her until they rested on the faint yellow spark that,
solemn and unchanged, shone from the window of the dark house on the
crest.
That way lay some chance, a desperate chance. She warned Lady Betty by
a touch. "We must run!" she breathed in the girl's ear. "Look at the
fence, and when I tap your shoulder, climb over, and run to the
house!"
Lady Betty disengaged herself softly and nodded. Then, as if she was
granted some new insight into the character of the woman whose arms
were round her, as if she saw more clearly than before the other's
courage, and understood the self-denial that gave her the first and
better chance, she drew Sophia's face to her, and clinging to her,
kissed it. Then she crouched, waiting, waiting, her eyes on the fence.
Very, very gently Sophia lifted her head, saw that Hawkesworth was
looking the other way, and gave the signal. Betty, nimble and active,
was over in a moment unseen, unheard. Sophia followed, but the fence
creaked under her, and Hawkesworth heard it and turned. He saw her
poised on the fence, in the full moonlight, so that not a line of her
figure escaped him; with a yell of triumph he darted towards her. But
directly in his path lay a low gorse-bush, still in shadow. He did not
see it, tripped over it, and fell all his length on the grass. By the
time he was up again, the two were dim flying shadows, all but lost in
the darkness that lay beyond the fence.
All but lost; not quite. In three seconds he was at the fence, he was
over it, he was beginning to gain on them. They strained every nerve,
but they had to breast the steep side of the hill, and though fear and
the horror of his hand upon their shoulders gave them wings, breath
was lacking. Then Betty fell, and lost a precious yard; and though she
was up again, and panting onwards gallantly, for a few seconds he
thought that he would catch them with ease. Then the ascent began to
tell on him also. The fall had shaken him. He began to pant and
labour; he saw that he was not gaining on them, but rather losing
ground, and he slackened his pace, and shouted to the man on guard in
the road above, bidding him stop them.
The man with an answering shout reined back his horse to the narrow
pass where the road ran between the house and the cottages. There,
peering forward, he made ready to intercept them. Fortunately, the
moon, above and a little behind him, showed his figure in silhouette
in the gap; and Sophia clutching Betty's hand, dragged her back at the
moment she was stepping into the moonlit road. An instant the two
listened, trembling, palpitating, staring, like game driven into the
middle of the field. But behind them Hawkesworth's scrambling
footsteps and heavy breathing still came on; they could not wait. A
moment's sickening doubt, and Sophia pressed Betty's hand, and the two
darted together across the road, and took cover in a space still dark,
between the two cottages that flanked it on the farther side.
The man in the gap gave the alarm, shouting that they had crossed the
road; and Hawkesworth, coming up out of breath, asked with a volley of
curses why he had not stopped them.
"Because they did not come my way!" the fellow answered bluntly. "Why
didn't you catch 'em, captain?"
"Where are they?" Hawkesworth panted fiercely.
"Straight over they went. No! Between the hovels here!"
But Hawkesworth had a little recovered his breath, and with it his
cunning. Instead of following his prey into the dark space between the
buildings, he darted round the other side of the lower cottage, and in
a twinkling was on the open slope beyond. Here the moonlight fell
evenly, the hillside was clear of gorse, he could see a hundred yards.
But he caught no glimpse of fleeing figures, he heard no sound of
retiring footsteps; and quick as thought he turned up the hill, and
learned the reason.
A high wall ran from cottage to cottage, rendering exit that way
impossible. Sophia had trapped herself and her companion; they were in
a _cul de sac!_ With a cry of triumph he turned to go back; as he ran
he heard the horseman he had left call to him. Opportunely, as he
gained the road, he was joined by the third of the band, the rogue he
had left at the stepping stones.
"Have you nabbed them?" the fellow panted.
"They're here!" Hawkesworth answered. "I think he's got them."
"And the sparklers?"
Hawkesworth nodded; but the next instant swore and stood. The man on
the horse, who should have been guarding the mouth of the dark entry,
where the girls lay trapped, was a dozen yards farther up the road,
his back to the cottages, and his face to the house with the gable
end.
"What the devil are you doing?" Hawkesworth roared. "They are here,
man!"
"They have bolted!" the fellow answered sullenly. "Or one of them has.
She shook a shawl in this brute's face, and he reared. Before I could
get him round----"
"She got off?" the Irishman shrieked.
"No! She's here, in the house! Burn her, when I get hold of her I'll
make her smart for it!"
"She? Then where's the other?"
"She's where she was, for all I know," the man answered. "I've seen
nothing of her."
But he lied in that. While he had been marking down the woman who had
frightened his horse with her shawl--and who then had glided coolly
into the house, the door of which stood ajar--he had seen with the
tail of his eye a flying skirt vanish down the road behind him. He had
a notion that one had got clear, but he was not sure; and if he said
anything he would be blamed. So he stood while Hawkesworth and the
other searched the dark space between the cottages.
A few seconds sufficed to show that there was no one there, and
Hawkesworth turned and swore at him.
"Well, there's one left!" the offender answered sulkily. "We've got
her in the house, and there's no back door. Take your change out of
her."
"Aye, but who's going in to fetch her?" Hawkesworth snarled. "I've not
had the smallpox. Perhaps you have. In that case, in you go, man. You
run no risk, or but little."
The rogue's face fell. "Oh Lord!" he said. "I'd not thought of that!
What a vixen it is!"
"In you go, man, and have her out!"
"I'm hanged if I do!" was the answer; and the fellow reined back his
horse in a hurry. "Faugh! I can smell the vinegar from here!" he
cried. And he spat on the ground.
"Will you go, Clipper? Come, man, you're not afraid?"
But Clipper, the third of the band, so called because he had once lain
in the condemned hold for the offence of reducing His Majesty's gold
coin, declined in terms not doubtful; and for a few seconds the three
glared at one another, rage in the greater villain's eyes, a dogged
resolution, not unmingled with shame, in his hirelings'. To be
baffled, and by a girl! To have her at bay, and fear the encounter! To
be outwitted, outdared, and by a woman! The moonlight that lay on the
lonely country side, the night wind that stirred the willows by the
stream, the height of blue above them with its myriad watching eyes,
these things had no awe for them, touched no chord in their dulled
consciences; but the smoky yellow gleam that shone from the window of
the dark gable, and was visible where two of them stood--that and the
dread terror that lay behind it scared even these hardened men.
"Will you let all go?" Hawkesworth cried in rage. "We have the girl,
and not a soul within four miles to interfere! We've jewels to the
tune of thousands! And you'll let them go when it's only to pick them
up!"
"Aye, and the smallpox with them!" Clipper retorted grimly. "I've seen
a man that died of that," with a shudder, "and I don't want to see
another. Go yourself, captain," he sneered, "it's your business."
The thrust went home. "So I will, by----!" the Irishman cried
passionately. "I'll have her out, and the stuff! But I'll think twice
before I pay you, you lily-livers! You chicken hearts. Give me a
light!"
"There's light enough upstairs!" the Clipper answered mockingly. But
the other man, more amenable, produced a flint and steel and a candle
end, and lighting the one from the other handed it to Hawkesworth.
"Likely enough you'll find her behind the door, captain," he said
civilly. "'Twon't be much risk after all."
"Then go yourself, you cur," Hawkesworth answered brutally. He was
torn this way and that; between fear and rage, cupidity and cowardice.
The ardour of the chase grew cool in this atmosphere of disease; the
courage of the man failed before this house given up to the fell
plague, that in those days took pitiless toll of rich and poor, of old
and young, of withered cheeks and bright eyes, of kings and joiners'
daughters. His gorge rose at the sharp scent of vinegar, at the duller
odour of burnt rags with which the air was laden; they were the rough
disinfectants of the time, used before the panic-stricken survivors
fled the place. In face of the danger he had to confront, women have
ever been bolder than men, though they have more to lose. He was no
exception.
Yet he would go. To flinch was to be lessened for ever in the eyes of
the meaner villains, his hirelings; to dare was to confirm the evil
pre-eminence he claimed. Bitter black rage in his heart--rage in
especial against the woman who laid this necessity upon him--he thrust
the door wide open, and shielding the candle, of which the light but
feebly irradiated the black cavern before him, he crossed the
threshold.
The place he entered seemed all dark to eyes fresh from the moonbeams;
but some light there was beside that which he carried. From the open
door of a narrow staircase that led to the upper rooms a faint
reflection of the candles that burned above issued; by aid of which he
saw that he stood in the great kitchen of the farm. But the black pot
that tenanted the vast gloomy recess of the fireplace, hung over dead,
white ashes--cold relics of the cheer that had once reigned there. The
cradle in the corner was still and shrouded. In the middle of the
stone floor a bench, a mere slab on four-straddling legs, lay
overturned, upset by the panic-stricken survivors in their hurried
flight; and beside it, stiff and grinning, sprawled the body of a
black cat, killed in some frenzy of fear or superstition ere the
living left the house to the care of the dead. A brooding odour of
disease filled the gaunt, wide-raftered room, infected the shadowy
hanging flitches, and grew stronger and more sickly towards the
staircase at the farther end.
Yet it was there he saw her, as he paused uncertain, his heart like
water. She was standing on the lowest step of the stairs as if she had
retreated thither on his entrance. Her one hand held her skirt a
little from the floor, and close to her; the other hung by her side.
Her eyes shone large in her white face; and in her look and in her
attitude was something solemn and unearthly, that for a moment awed
him.
He stared spell-bound. She was the first to speak. "What do you want?"
she whispered--as if the dead in the room above could hear her.
"The jewels!" he muttered, his voice subdued to the pitch of hers.
"The jewels! Give me the jewels, and I will go!"
"They are not here," she said. "They are far away. Here is only death.
Death is here, death is above," she continued solemnly. "The air is
full of death. If you would not die, go! Go before it be too late."
He battled with the dark fear which her words fluttered before him;
the fear that was in the air of the room, the fear that made his light
burn more dimly than was natural. He battled with it, and hated her
for it, and for his cowardice. "You she-devil!" he cried, "where are
the jewels?"
"Gone," she answered solemnly.
"Where?"
"Where you will never find them."
"And you think to get off with that?" he hissed; and advanced a step
towards her. "You lie!" he cried furiously. "You have them. And if you
do not give them up----"
"I have them not!" she answered firmly; and little did he suspect how
wildly her heart was leaping behind the bold front she showed him.
Little did he suspect, the deadly terror she had had to surmount
before she penetrated so far into this loathsome house. "I have them
not," she repeated. "Nor have I any fear of you. There is that here
that is your master and mine. Come up, come up," she continued, a
touch of wildness in her manner, and she mounted a step or two of the
narrow staircase, and beckoned him to follow her. "Come up and you
will see him."
"You drab!" he cried, "do you come down, or it will be the worse for
you! Do you hear me? Come down, you slut, or when I fetch you I will
have no mercy. You don't know what I shall do to you; I do, and----"
He stood, he was silent, he choked with rage; for as if he had not
spoken, her figure first and then her feet, mounting without pause or
hesitation, vanished from sight. He was left, scared and baffled,
alone in the great desolate kitchen where his light shone a mere
spark, making visible the darkness that canopied him. A rat moving in
the dim fringe between light and shadow startled him. A rope of onions
swayed by the draught of air that blew through the open door, brought
the sweat to his brow. He took two steps forward and one backward; the
shroud on the cradle fluttered, and but for the men waiting outside,
he would have fled at once and given up woman and booty. But fear of
ridicule still conquered fear of death; conquered even the
superstition that lay dormant in his Irish blood; he forced himself
onward. His eyes fixed balefully, his hands withheld from contact with
the wall--as if he had been a woman with skirts--he crept upwards till
his gaze rose above the level of the upper floor; then for a moment
the light of two thick candles, half-burned, gave him back his
courage. His brow relaxed, he sprang with a cry up the upper stairs,
set his foot in the room and stood!
On the huge low wooden bed from which the coarse blue and white
bedding protruded, two bodies lay sheeted. At their feet the candles
burned dull before the window that should have been open, but was
shut; as the thick noisome air of the room, that turned him sick and
faint, told him. Near the bed, on the farther side, stood that he
sought; Sophia, her eyes burning, her face like paper. His prey then
was there, there, within his reach; but she had not spoken without
reason. Death, death in its most loathsome aspect lay between them;
and the man's heart was as water, his feet like lead.
"If you come near me," she whispered, "if you come a step nearer, I
will snatch this sheet from them, and I will wrap you in it! And you
will die! In eight days you will be dead! Will you see them? Will you
see what you will be?" And she lowered her hand to raise the sheet.
He stepped back a pace, livid and shaking. "You she-devil!" he
muttered. "You witch!"
"Go!" she answered, in the same low tone. "Go! Or I will bring your
death to you! And you will die! As you have lived, foul, noisome,
corrupt, you will die! In eight days you will die--if you come one
step nearer!"
She took a step forward herself. The man turned and fled.